Running the React sample app

In this guide, you'll get a brief introduction to website development practices with Kentico Cloud. We will start by running a React sample application on your machine and updating an article in the Sample Project. Then we will explore how the content of the article is structured.

After you grasp the core idea behind a headless CMS, everything in the sample application will make a lot more sense much faster.

Table of contents

Accessing the Sample Project

This tutorial requires access to the Sample Project that demonstrates our features and best practices. This full-featured project contains marketing content for Dancing Goat – an imaginary chain of coffee shops. This content is used in our sample applications.

Now, let's explore the Sample Project and update its content so that you can see the changes reflected in your locally running application.

Making changes to your project

After signing in to your Kentico Cloud account you will see your Sample Project to play around with.

Your welcome screen is a list of all the pieces of content in your project (we call them content items).

You can search for a content item by name or apply filters to quickly find what you are looking for:

In the filter panel on the left, select the Article content type to view only articles.

Filtering content by content type

Click one of the articles to edit it. For example, try the Coffee processing techniques article. (Inside the running app, navigate to Articles -> Coffee processing techniques to see how the content is actually displayed.)

Details of a published content item

Updating a published article

The article is currently published, meaning it's publicly accessible and, as such, cannot be updated directly.

To edit the article:

On the Details panel, click the Published workflow step.

Click Create a new version. The old version stays up, while you edit the new version.

Edit the text of the article or change its teaser image.

Your changes will be saved automatically, but to make them visible in the application, you have to publish the new version of your article.

Voila! You have successfully updated content in your Sample Project. Refresh the browser window with your application to see the changes on the website.

Feel free to further explore the Sample Project and the sample application.

The advantage of using Kentico Cloud lies in the freedom to define how your content is structured. Let's see an example inside the Sample Project itself.

Exploring content structure

The Details panel shows us that our Coffee processing techniques content item is based on the Article content type.

From the app menu, choose Content models.

Click the Article content type to open it.

How the Article content type is modeled

How content is structured in Kentico Cloud

Content item is any piece of content in your project. It is made up of content elements, such as texts, images, files, etc.

Each content item is based on a single Content type. A content type is a template that defines the structure of the content item – which content elements it contains, their names, restrictions, guidelines, and so on.

You can mix and match the available content elements to define your own content types.

Deploying the React sample app

When using a headless CMS like Kentico Cloud to power a single page application, you don't necessarily have to write any server-side code. Because the application only requires static resources, you have many interesting deployment options available to you.

Here, we are going to use Surge to deploy your React sample application:

Type {~npm run build~} to build the application and make it production-ready.

Type {~cd build~} to navigate to the build folder.

Type {~surge~} to deploy your application. The first time you do this, Surge will prompt you to set up your account. Every other time it will confirm the build directory and generate a funny subdomain for your app.

You can change the sub-domain if you like and can even use your own domain, all for free. After that, you’re done. The site is deployed and ready to be accessed on the domain specified during deployment.

Summarized

Kentico Cloud makes no assumptions about how your content is displayed. It simply delivers it via a RESTful Delivery API to any application that asks for it – be it a website, mobile app, chatbot, electronic billboard, virtual voice assistant or an internet-enabled toaster.

We deliver the content, you do whatever you want with it – using the technology of your choice.

A traditional CMS would force you to put your content into neatly arranged boxes to fit inside a pre-defined template. The power of Kentico Cloud comes from not getting in your way. Content structure and content presentation are truly separated and you have the flexibility to define both according to the needs of your project.

What's next?

Have a look at our available SDKs, sample applications and tools for JavaScript.